Twixt Desk and Shelvesby James Leatham

It was the greatest day of the year for St. Congans – the day of its cattle show. All the many roads leading to the town were strong with cyclists, motor cars in variety, and gigs drawn by farm-horses whose coats were sleek and their sides well filled even if their feet were hairy.

On the terrace occupied by the press and sculptor’s yard a throng trade was doing, albeit no money passed. The printer’s predecessor had been a cycle agent and repairer, and had apparently considered it to his advantage to erect a stand for cycles, partly roofed in with the corrugated iron that was everywhere in the town. At the entrance to the terrace stood two boards, one inviting all and sundry to ‘Ride a Rambler Bicycle’ the other announcing ‘Cycles Stored Free.’

It was no wonder if the bucolic riders, economical from sheer lifelong want of opportunity to spend, should push their steeds up the slope from the gate where they got this encouragement.

The printer trundled his platen machine, its revolving ink-table going clack-clack as the disc hitched forward and the impression went home, and as he trundled he looked out with a benevolent smile upon the flocking cyclists. He knew there would be nothing for him out of the flock; these people did their legs a treat, but did not need anything for their brains, they thought. He was pleased to think there were some services that were still to be had from private enterprise for nothing, that the world was not entirely commercialised.

But his benevolent disposition towards the cycle-rack was not quite disinterested on ordinary days. The young people came on cycles to the secondary school round the corner, and, stabling their steeds here, they naturally came into the shop for some of their schoolbooks and stationery. Being up off the road the bookseller-printer was glad of the cycle-stand that brought them in from the highway.

The sculptor has no such interest. Schoolgirls and casual caller do not buy tombstones. Yet today he had put aside his mallet and chisels and got into his second-best clothes in order to do the purely friendly. All day he stood at the receipt of a custom that was without money and without price. Those who came with motor cycles had his special attention. Early on, the ordinary rack, back and front, was as full as it could stick of them. So those who came with a motor cycle were invited to bring it into the very holy of holies in the yard – the place where ‘Sacred to the Memory’ and even an occasional face, was deftly chiselled and gilded or painted in.

‘Bring ‘er owre here,’ he would say to one of the knuts who insist on wearing their cycle cap with the peak to the back. ‘If ye were gaun awa shortly it would be a’ richt: but ye’ll maybe be bidin’ the day; an’ the lads come doon drunk at nicht, and ye maybe micht ger ‘er blandit. ‘

He officiated with as much assiduity as if there were quite a good day’s business in the thing.

At the height of the day he had enough cycles stored to have brought him, at a penny a head, some thirty shillings. He had lost his day’s work and missed the chance of going to the show; and there was not a penny for him in direct return.

His daughter had early in the day started out with flags to sell for one of the numerous military charities. And the cycle-storage did help the sale of flags. When the Geordies were inclined to be stiff, the sculptor rallied them and wound them in – of course for a penny only, even when they were strong and likely young men who ought themselves to have been in the trenches. The printer kept giving change for sixpence, and the flag-seller kept emptying her collecting-box. It was the only score at the corner that day.

As the afternoon advanced, exhibitors passed with their heifers and their mares: the show was over.

‘Faur’s yer ticket?’ the sculptor would shout to someone passing with a beast in the road below.

‘I hinna gotten ane!’ the answer would come, readily enough.

The flag-seller would come in, change her wet clothes and sally forth with a fresh collecting box and a replenished supply of flags.

‘Why don’t you get your tickets printed, and make them pay for the storage?’ asked the printer during a lull in the traffic.

‘Ye see, if I acceptit payment I would be responsible for the bicycle,’ replied the uncommercial sculptor.

‘Well, I should do it and accept the responsibility,’ said the printer. ‘They’re mostly honest anyhow. The fact that they are willing to leave their cycles in that way shows that they are honest themselves, and don’t suspect other people. A book of numbered and perforated tickets would cost you very little, and they would be quite agreeable to pay. To have the cycles numbered would be in the interests of decency and order, and you wouldn’t lose a day’s work for nothing.

Pro Bono Publico

But in truth it was a highly uncommercial corner, and the printer himself played the Obliging Citizen. At the door of his machine-room was a water-tap at which he washed his forms. It was a popular tap. Men working in the neighbourhood came to slake their thirst; and the printer had provided a tumbler which sat on a shelf just inside the door. The callers mostly knew where to get it.

‘We’ll tak a drappie o’ yer water, wi’ yer leave,’ they would say as they helped themselves to the glass.

‘Certainly, sir,’ or ‘Ay, ay, surely,’ the printer would say. And sometimes he would add, ‘There’s nae sair heids fae that tap.’

And often the thirsty caller, as he restored the glass, would come forward and watch the sheets being thrown off, and there would be more or less of comment.

‘No, no,’ said the man, ‘Thank you a’ the same. I jist like to slubber’t off the cauk.’ And he held his mouth to the tap and let it rinse him accordingly.

It was quite a friendly, handy corner. There was a sawmill nearby, and the women and boys, carrying great bundles of the smaller lopped-off branches ringed on their backs, sometimes came in at the gate and rested their burdens on a part of the terrace which was like a high step. They were not content to take the rest and be thankful, but would freely discuss their surroundings, sometimes with no great flattery of the printer and his landlord. A boy taking a rest in this way was hailed by friend from the road.

‘How much?’ meaning how much had he paid for his back-load of branches.

‘A wing and a maik!’ answered the burden-bearer, scorning to say anything so soft as ‘a penny ha’penny.’

It was ‘some’ wood for the money anyhow.

It appears however that ‘a wing and a maik’ must have been the price at which the possessor was willing to sell rather than the price paid. For by way of keeping up the uncommercial character of the corner, it turned that these bundles of firewood were not sold, but given away.

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About the Author

​James Leatham was born in Aberdeen in 1865 and apprenticed to a printer aged 13½. Over his life he worked for a range of papers/periodicals in the North East of Scotland and England, including the St Nicholas Press, The Workers Herald and The Peterhead Sentinel (editorship of which he took over from David Scott in 1897). He wrote for radical socialist papers throughout his life at a time when socialism and the Labour Party were a febrile battleground of theory and practice. He more than once lost his job because of his political views. In his 50’s he moved back to Aberdeenshire, setting up the Deveron Press in 1916 from his Turriff base. He published many ‘penny pamphlets’ and in book form his publications include the political work Socialism and Character (1897); William Morris: A Master of Many Crafts (1900); and a tribute to David Scott, Daavit (1912).